Why Mark Messier is Often Regarded the Worst/Most Hated Vancouver Canuck of All Time.

Why Mark Messier is Often Regarded the Worst/Most Hated Vancouver Canuck of All Time.

*Disclaimer: this is a purely informative piece meant to enlighten hockey fans on the influence of Mark Messier on the Vancouver Canucks. This is not meant to be offensive or controversial, and is only designed to allow readers to understand his relationship with the team and the fanbase.

With all due to respect to Mark Messier and the incredible career he had, there was a period in his career in which he was nothing short of a cancer to his team. Canucks fans who experienced this era are well aware of Messier's effect on the franchise and why he is the most hated player in franchise history. This thread is designed to share with readers the story of Mark Messier's relationship with the Vancouver Canucks throughout the 1990s. Undoubtedly, this story was not as well-documented outside of Vancouver, but those who had witnessed and experienced it over a period of those three years will be able to recall a tale of disappointment, division, and bitterness.

The story begins in the 1996 off-season when the Canucks were in search of a top-line center. Pat Quinn, the Canucks' general manager at the time, had targeted Wayne Gretzky as his free agent of choice. Unfortunately, Quinn's own impatience resulted in him presenting Gretzky with an ultimatum in the middle of one summer's evening, calling him in the middle of the night to make a decision about where he would sign. Gretzky took offense and ultimately chose not to sign with Vancouver. Having missed this opportunity, another high-profile free agent centerman, Mark Messier, was available the following off-season, and served as a consolation for Quinn's failure.

Messier signed with the team in the summer of 1997, and fans generally viewed the acquisition positively. They were well aware of how Messier had led the Rangers to the Stanley Cup victory in the 1994 playoffs and how he had decimated the hopes and dreams of Canucks fans that year. Fans were still bitter, but were generally prepared to forgive him; he was a Canadian player, a renowned leader returning to the Canadian west. When he joined the team, he was expected to contribute as one of the team's top players. He was the highest-paid player on the team, earning $6 million per year, and fans had certain hopes for him.

Instead, his signing marked the beginning of a period of disaster for the franchise. As soon as he joined the team, he demanded to wear the unofficially-retired #11, which had been retired to acknowledge and respect the passing of an original Canuck, Wayne Maki, in 1974. The organization gave him the number without the consent of Maki's family, which sparked outrage from the family. At this point, the team had a new owner, having bought the team from the Canucks' previous long-time owners, the Griffiths family, after the latter had overspent to build GM Place. The McCaws were supposed to only own a share of the team, but took advantage of this opportunity to buy the remaining shares. The mysterious and very private McCaw brothers now owned the team, and business became very secretive and sketchy. Giving the #11 to Messier was one of these slimy decisions.

Here in Vancouver, the McCaw family remains shrouded in mystery. The brothers are notoriously media-shy and do not grant interviews. There has been little public indication of their plans for Orca Bay or their teams. Local sports fans take solace in the knowledge that the family also owns the arena, so they would gain nothing by moving their two prime tenants out of Vancouver. There's also some reassurance in the success that the McCaws had in building, then selling, their cellular phone business. But that's about all that anybody knows so far. When Orca Bay held the press conference to announce the change in Arthur's ownership status, John McCaw agreed to talk to the media afterwards only on the condition that no cameras or tape recorders be present in the room. Even then, he offered little in the way of a vision of the future of Orca Bay.

Before the season began, Trevor Linden gave his captaincy to Messier as a sign of respect, but later regretted giving the captaincy to him, as he felt Messier had imposed an unwelcome presence on the team. As soon as Messier stepped on the ice, fans knew he was not the same player he was even a year ago. Game footage from the 1997-98, 1998-99, and 1999-2000 seasons clearly show that Messier was not interested from the very start. Statistics affirm this as well. He was a disastrous signing, proving to be a lazy player who took short shifts, shied away from physicality, did not shoot the puck, nor carried with him his mean streak from past years. Those who witnessed those seasons know how dreadful he was.

Mark Messier looked like only a shell of his former self. He was a totally different player, despite wearing the captain's "C" and being paid $6 million. Mickey Redmond mentioned in an early game between the Canucks and Red Wings during the 1997-98 season that Messier did not look like himself. He showed no heart, no grit, no passion. He played a lazy game and was often a liability.

The team struggled early in the season, and so GM Pat Quinn fired coach Tom Renney and introduced Mike Keenan to the team -- another mistake. Keenan immediately changed the dressing room philosophy and made the team feel even more uncomfortable; soon afterwards, the McCaws fired Quinn and promoted Keenan to GM as well as coach.

Keenan played favorites, often allowing Messier to roam in whatever role he was comfortable with. Messier, meanwhile, was often seen socializing with Keenan at Vancouver Grizzlies games. The two had a clear connection that the rest of the team did not share. As the Canucks continued to sink with Messier and Keenan at the helm, the organization did the unthinkable and traded away all of the fan favorite players, including the beloved long-time captain, Trevor Linden. Keenan traded away Linden, Gino Odjick, Kirk McLean, Martin Gelinas, and Dave Babych that season, leaving the Canucks with barely any of its previous personality. They were soulless, cycling through goaltenders, swapping parts, and remaining a bottom-dweller for three seasons. Keenan and Messier were in full control until Keenan was replaced by Brian Burke the following year.

Linden's camp later made clear that Messier's presence felt hostile, and that Keenan was a huge issue as well. Several players were outspoken about Messier, including Gino Odjick:

In the offseason, the Canucks signed Mark Messier, and Linden graciously gave up his captaincy to him. But the team continued to struggle with Renney, and he was fired on Nov. 12.

Keenan replaced Renney and was given the authority to make personnel changes. He did just that. From his arrival, Keenan feuded with Linden, and the coach got rid of his problem, angering the Vancouver fans.

And, in the words of the New York Daily News' Frank Brown:

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Linden, asked to deal with Mark Messier's hostile takeover of the dressing room, responded by surrendering the captaincy.

Here are two articles from the end of the 1997-98 season detailing Messier's relationship with his teammates:

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Messier: Did the Canucks miss the Mark?: It has not been a vintage season for the Canucks and their newest captain.: [Final Edition]
Mason, Gary. The Vancouver Sun [Vancouver, B.C] 17 Apr 1998: E1 / FRONT.

...

Expectations. Oh, yea, there were certainly those. About $37 million US worth of them. And Messier was a big chunk of that... I've studied Messier up close this season and don't know him one ounce better than I did before he arrived. Well, maybe I do. I know how important his image is to him and how closely he guards and protects it. And monitors it too... Messier doesn't indulge in the easy banter of his teammates. After the game, after he's showered and dressed, he steps before his dressing room stall, stiff-backed, chin up, to offer his pronouncements on the game. Then he's gone... He's often moved through this season alone. On the plane and team bus, he's sat by himself, deep in private thoughts. Most players couldn't summon the nerve to sit and chat with him. Which surprised me. I thought the art of team building, as Messier so expertly knows it, happened differently.

...

Messier's contribution this season will mostly be measured by his performance on the ice... His play away from the puck has been the biggest concern. But let's be clear here: this was not one of Messier's strong suits in New York either. He still thinks offence first... But Messier's defensive lapses have given other teams goals. And cost the Canucks games. Personally, this has been the most annoying aspect of Messier's conduct this season: Never once did I hear him single out his own poor play after a bad game... I never heard Messier say that this year: `that was my guy who scored. I have to pick him up. It cost us the game.'

What I have heard from Messier has surprised me. A great deal of talk about injuries that have plagued him. There were also the over- blown comments about the arena's bad ice. Regardless, it's often sounded like excuses and I've never known Mark Messier to rely on an excuse in his life.

...

Messier was always the teacher's pet. In Keenan's eyes, he could do no wrong. While the coach didn't hesitate to rip into anyone else for lackadaisical play, he would never finger his captain. If I was a player on that bench, watching the way Messier played some nights, I'd have problems with that. Because it smacks of preferential treatment. Which is okay if someone is playing like a superstar, but not if his wide circles are costing you goals.

While this might have cost Messier some respect in the dressing room this season, a bigger problem has been the role he's played in personnel decisions. Former Canuck Gino Odjick's outspoken comments about Messier's thirst for power and the influence he has on all trades, speak best to the problem the Canuck captain has... there's no question he's had input on moves. Shortly after arriving he talked to Tom Renney about a few players he thought weren't of any use to the team. And I can see how this might create problems for teammates... At times Messier has wanted to distance himself from this role and at other times he hasn't.

He's been a skating contradiction. When I talked to him in January he told me the team needed to be completely restructured.

Gino Odjick has been thinking about speaking his mind for quite some time since leaving Vancouver. On Wednesday, perhaps the most popular player in the history of the Canucks pulled the trigger. The target was Mark Messier, the man Odjick says consults regularly with coach and acting GM Mike Keenan on trades and management moves and is largely responsible for the shambles this season has become. While declining to say what put him over the top and made him finally decide to speak out, Odjick started at the beginning.

"Messier was brought here to help lead us... and everybody was on board waiting to go along with him," said Odjick, who was in his eighth season with the Canucks when traded to the New York Islanders March 23..."... We were all looking forward to the season positively. It was going to be great. But right from the start it was clear he wanted to have all the power and wanted his own people around him.

"He didn't break a sweat for the first 10 games and just waited for Tom Renney and Pat Quinn to get fired.

"He talks to ownership all the time and he's responsible for Keenan being here and he's part of most of the trades... He's responsible for a lot of the changes.

"Look what happened with Trevor (Linden) in St. Louis when Keenan gave him (hell). Did he come over to him and say, 'Look Trev, we're with you?' He didn't say a word. How can you be captain like that? How can the team be together that way? He's not with the players. He's the one who controls everything."

...

"They signed him to help us but all he wanted was most of us out of there so he could bring in his own people. The organization has always been great, but he just wanted to tear it apart and do it his way. But you'll never see Keenan bench Messier, no matter how bad he plays."

Odjick did not pretend he was crucial to the success of the Canucks or any other team.

"I'm nobody. I'm not the kind of player who can carry a team or make a big difference. I haven't won six Stanley Cups, but I've always been able to look everyone I've ever played with in the eye. I've been honest and I've got to be honest. He (Messier) just wants to destroy everything so he gets the power. Everyone is brought in to play for Mark."

"Ninety per cent of the players don't want to do it because it's so hard and maybe they don't see themselves in the role that they're playing or maybe they don't see themselves being played in the right situations or themselves being successful individually. Maybe they're under contract, maybe they're playing out their option. There's a million reasons why they don't."

...

"Everybody wants a player who's played on a championship team at some point." You look at this Canuck team and you see a $37 million US lemon. Messier looks at this team and says the payroll doesn't mean anything. "If anything, it's masqueraded some of the real problems here that are hampering the team. I think you have to take money out of the equation. This team needs to be completely restructured. Talent is only one element of many elements that it takes to be a competitive team, let alone a championship team."

...

"In my mind there's definitely a formula to winning. And I know, from all the championship teams I've played on, it's always the same kinds of things that were in place..." Messier has thought a lot about winning, about the richness of the team experience when it all comes together. "I can't teach my students; I can only help them explore themselves," Messier says, quoting a well-known Buddhist verse.

...

Some people feel Messier's own play hasn't exactly been stellar. That Keenan is asking everyone else to go out and punish the opposition except Messier. He says his game has changed over the years. He isn't as physically dominating a player as he once was because the players in the league have changed. They're bigger and faster. And they don't allow Messier to do the things he once did.

"And let's face it, I'm not 25 years old anymore. But I feel great physically and mentally. I'm as motivated as ever to do what it takes to win." He's also playing 25 to 30 minutes a game and when you're playing that much, at his age, you have to use your brains a bit more, not run at everything that moves. In an interview filled with important messages, Messier delivers a final one. His allegiance is completely to his teammates. He is not, as some have suggested, a GM disguised as a captain... Messier makes no apologies for sitting courtside with Keenan and owner John McCaw at a recent basketball game. A scene that cemented the impression in some people's minds that he was aligned more with management than the players. He says McCaw's a friend who invited him to attend the game.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with that because there was nothing more than that. That's the way I want it and that's the way it should be."

...

Messier lost a lot of respect in the dressing room for his hypocrisy: he was lazy, offered some of the most uninspired play of anyone on the team, provided no leadership in the dressing room, and yet seemed to demand that changes be made to shape the room into something more inspired. He isolated himself from his teammates and spent no time developing any sort of relationship with the community. That's not the way to go. He wanted to play the role of manager while also being one the most overpaid players on the team and a terrible role model; to make matters worse, the team's long-time captain was present in the room while all of this unfolded. Linden and Keenan clashed; Messier was on Keenan's side. That was not a very pleasant dressing room.

One wouldn't think of Messier as a good leader during his time in Vancouver; he was a tyrant.

Also, in reference to some of his complaints:

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Sore elbow behind Messier's frustrating season Vancouver Canucks' fans boo team captain who is averaging less than a point a game
Kerr, Grant. The Globe and Mail [Toronto, Ont] 26 Mar 1998: S.3.

VANCOUVER -- Mark Messier has been fumbling with the puck for several weeks because of a sore arm. Now the proud captain of the Vancouver Canucks must fight back the disappointment of being jeered by fickle fans at GM Place.

Messier heard the boo birds this week and admitted he's having a hard time playing up to even his own standards, let alone the expectations of fans after signing a three-year, $20-million (U.S.) contract.

Vancouver fans shocked long-time observers Tuesday when they suddenly turned on Messier, 37, and booed him in the second period after the centre took the puck away from unsuspecting teammate Brian Noonan in the offensive zone against the New York Islanders. The play was innocent enough and the two players seemed to joke about it later on the bench.

But fans were in no mood for frivolity as they've come to expect much more from the veteran of 19 seasons in the National Hockey League.

...

"It's been a frustrating month for myself, playing with my [sore] elbow," Messier said later. "I don't have any qualms about [the booing]. I expect a lot of myself and it's been a tough month.

"There's been no time to sit out and rest. When you play injured and you're not 100 per cent, you open yourself to some criticism and that's part of the game. You have to be big enough and strong enough to stand up to the criticism that comes your way when you're not playing up to your ability."

...

Messier had problems controlling the puck against the Islanders, once forcing an offside when the disc seemed to almost stick to the ice. Messier agreed with the observation that ice conditions in Vancouver have been terrible all season.

"We have the worst ice in the league," Messier said. "We've got guys that would excel on great ice. I don't think there's any excuse for it and it has to be addressed."

Linden claimed the decision to hand over the 'C' was his and his alone. "I didn't know what I was going to do and I didn't want to make a quick decision," Linden explained. "I wanted to see how it played out. You know, the day I was driving from Whistler to go to the [Messier signing] announcement I turned on the radio in my car and the first thing I heard was 'would Messier be captain?' "I was monitoring the situation and was waiting to see what felt right. And it just felt right. Now I'll be apprenticing under one of the best leaders in professional sport." Long-time Canuck GM Pat Quinn nodded his approval. "Let's face it, we acquired a player who has an aura of leadership about him," Quinn said of Messier. "Trevor felt it would be better to defer the captaincy to a person of Mark's presence and accomplishments." A month later, Quinn was fired. Four months later, Linden was traded to the New York Islanders.

And more about his relationship with Keenan:

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He was an outstanding prospect as a teenager and won two Memorial Cups with the Medicine Hat Tigers. He was drafted second overall by the Canucks in 1988, had a wonderful 30-goal rookie season, was named captain at age 20 and nearly led his team to the Stanley Cup in 1994. So he was unprepared — would anybody be? — for the vicious verbal assault from new head coach Mike Keenan on Dec. 8, 1997. Keenan had replaced Tom Renney a month earlier and obviously wasn't enamoured with Linden or anything about him. Linden injured his groin just one week into Keenan's reign and returned to the lineup that fateful night in St. Louis. It was also Keenan's first time back in St. Louis after being fired by the Blues the previous season. With the Canucks down 4-1 heading into the third period, Keenan decided to unload on Linden. According to former Sun columnist Gary Mason, Iron Mike was incensed that Linden was commending some of his teammates for their effort to that point. "Shut the bleep up, just shut the bleep up!" Keenan screamed. "Who the bleep are you?" Keenan questioned Linden's pride in a tirade that continued for three or four minutes. Mason wrote that Keenan later apologized, but the damage was done. The relationship between coach and player was beyond repair. It was only a matter of time until Linden was gone. Two of his pals, Kirk McLean and Martin Gelinas, were traded on Jan. 2. The house cleaning in Vancouver was under way. Linden would be next.

VANCOUVER (CP) -- Vancouver Canuck captain Mark Messier has come to the defence of head coach Mike Keenan, indicating the only controversy about the team should be its last-place standing.

Keenan has been in the eye of a media hurricane since Sunday when he publicly accused popular Canuck veteran Trevor Linden of playing at "50 per cent."

Details of his harsh treatment of Linden during a December game in St. Louis and apparently petty incidents involving traded winger Martin Gelinas were also reported in the Vancouver Sun.

"It depends what you think is controversy," Messier said Tuesday when asked about the turmoil that has engulfed the team in recent days.

...

Keenan smiled when he was told about Messier's comments.

"When you're in last place there's a tremendous amount of controversy," Keenan said.

...

Messier also played under Keenan in New York, where the two helped the Rangers to the Stanley Cup.

Keenan said Monday that he had some regrets about criticizing Linden through the media, rather than dealing with the player privately.

"I knew I was at risk by going public," he said Tuesday. "It was a high-risk move. I knew it would be controversial and I knew I'd be criticized. I took that risk because I care a great deal about Trevor. I want him to be part of this.

"Those people who find it most difficult to change, if in the end they can accept it, they're the strongest rooted. I'm very emotional. I care a great deal. Sometimes if I make errors I'm erring on the side of risk because I do care passionately about what I'm doing."

...

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Trevor Linden knew the trade was coming, he just didn't know where or when. He finally found out on Feb. 6, 1998. The first to tell him was equipment manager Pat O'Neill. He then heard it from head coach Mike Keenan moments later. He was off to the New York Islanders for young defenceman Bryan McCabe, promising but moody power forward Todd Bertuzzi and a third-round pick that became Jarkko Ruutu. After 10 years, Trevor Linden was finished as a Canuck. "It's a difficult day," said Linden, 27, at his farewell news conference. "I can't say enough about the time I spent here. The people have been tremendous. On the other hand, I knew something was going to happen. It's a chance for me to start again and move forward. "I have to say things weren't going really well here, the team was struggling and I was as well." At the heart of the trade was the poisonous relationship between Keenan, who became coach in mid-November, and Linden, the former franchise golden boy who had surrendered his captaincy to Keenan favourite Mark Messier. Everyone considered the moving of Linden as inevitable. "I don't know if the word 'inevitable' is correct," responded Keenan. "There was certainly a little bit of controversy that was expounded upon to make it a great deal of controversy by the media. "However, I think it should be noted that Trevor has unfortunately had some injuries this year and didn't quite get on track even before I arrived here." Linden was suffering from a knee injury when he was traded.

Traded now was the team captain who had led the team through thick and thin since 1990, who had offered the most inspiring playoff performance in franchise history playing through some of the most difficult injuries any player could endure, and who was the heart of the team:

"You don't know this, but Trevor Linden had cracked ribs and torn rib cartilage for the last four games of the 1994 Stanley Cup Final," Cliff Ronning said. "You can't imagine what it's like to hear your captain, in a room down the hall, screaming at the top of his lungs as they injected the needle into his rib cage. Knowing him, he probably thought we couldn't hear. He would then walk into our dressing room like nothing had happened. That was inspirational."

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At one point in Game 6 in Vancouver, Linden crawled on the ice to get to his bench, he was in so much pain.

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"Quinn slowly groomed our team as he went along and he needed a captain who shared his philosophy of hard work," Ronning said. "Trevor never took a shift off. He sacrificed his body to block shots and did a lot of little things that some scorers won't do. That's what made him an excellent captain."

In the strangest Canucks season in recent memory there were even more oddities Tuesday night at the Garage.

The visiting team's captain got a standing ovation from the sellout crowd, while the Canucks skipper received his first Bronx cheers of the season.

...

Linden was the subject of a moving video tribute in the pre-game ceremonies that ended with the scoreboard flashing Thanks Trevor to a roar from the crowd. But the Canucks scored the first goal of the game, 2:29 in, and never trailed.

"It was an odd day all around, with the trading deadline (at noon) and then Trevor and Gino (Odjick) playing for the other team," said Canucks defenceman Bret Hedican, now one of the longest- surviving members of the team. "We knew there would be a lot of emotion at the start of the game, so we tried to keep it simple."

...

The counterpoint to the love-in with Linden came in the second period when Canucks captain Mark Messier stole the puck from teammate Brian Noonan as he was teeing it up to shoot and then on the ensuing rush put himself offside.

The boos rained down on Messier, who was caught flat-footed by Claude Lapointe to create a two-on-one leading to the Isles' first goal near the end of the first period.

"It's been a frustrating month for me," said Messier, in reference to the tendinitis in his left elbow that's plagued him. "So I have no qualms about (the booing). I've had no time to sit out and when you play injured you open yourself up to criticism."

Messier lambasted the bad ice at GM Place, which has been a hot potato all season, blaming it for putting him offside.

With the core group of players now gone as part of Keenan and Messier's regime, the team was left mangled, hardly resembling its former self; meanwhile, the team finished in third-last place in the NHL that year with a record of 25-43-14. The team was absolute garbage, had a slimy owner, a ruinous GM/coach, and a cancerous team captain.

At the start of the following season, this is what Messier had to say:

"I came into this with my eyes open," said Messier, fairly convincingly. "I knew from the players around the league last year this was going to be tough and a lot of changes to the structure and organization had to be made. I knew the players weren't here. And I didn't want an accelerated or rushed plan in because of my age. I know it doesn't work like that.

"I have no trouble with being in a position similar to Slava Fetisov. He won Cups the past two seasons at ages 39 and 40 while playing a lesser role and that's the situation I may be in when we win here. It might be sooner if a lot of these young guys can play. But I don't have to be in the prominent role to win again. I know I probably won't, I'll have to contribute in other ways and my role will change. I have no problem with that."

McCaw replaced Keenan at the beginning of the 1998-99 season with Brian Burke and Marc Crawford, and things began to move in the proper direction again; Keenan's removal prompted Messier to change in ways, and the youth on the team began to listen to him, though Messier's continued on-ice laziness and poor performances would eventually lead to Brian Burke buying out the last two years of Messier's contract in Vancouver:

A dozen years later, however, the story still had not ended. Though Messier had by this time been long retired, news surfaced in 2012 that echoed the shady business practices of the McCaws and Messier's sense of entitlement from that era. The latter had included a clause in his contract that would allow him to profit from any increase in the franchise's value from 1997 to 2002. Of course, since the McCaws had, in 2004, sold their share of the team to the current owners, the Aquilinis, Messier went after the latter:

VANCOUVER - Mark Messier has been awarded a $6-million settlement in the Hall of Famer’s long-standing grievance over money he claimed he was owed by the Vancouver Canucks.

George Nicolau, an 87-year-old New York-based arbitrator with a long history of handling high-profile sports arbitration cases, rendered his decision recently after meeting with both sides earlier this year.

The Canucks made only a brief comment on the decision.

“Canucks Sports & Entertainment is aware of the arbitrator’s decision and will have no further comment on the matter,” the team said in a statement to The Vancouver Sun Thursday.

Messier did not return a message left for him with the New York Rangers, for whom he serves as special assistant to the president.

Messier signed a five-year, free-agent contract with the Canucks in 1997 for $6 million a season. The dispute between Messier and the team is believed to centre on deferred money the hockey player felt was owed to him.

It has been reported that Messier had a clause in his contract that would compensate him if the value of the Canuck franchise increased over the life of his contract, which expired in 2002.

After the way he destroyed the team, he now wanted money he felt he was owed. In truth, the team recorded its worst ever attendance at GM Place/Rogers Arena during the Messier years. Attendance in 1999-2000 averaged 14,641. The season after Messier was bought out, attendance rose to an average of 17,026 seats per game.

Without a doubt, Mark Messier was the face of evil for Canucks fans throughout the 1990s. Along with his role in the destruction of the team with his former Rangers bench boss in the latter half of that decade, Messier's greed continues to carry into the business of the Canucks organization. Prior to any of these events, he was responsible for ending the Canucks' hopes of a Stanley Cup in 1994 and injuring Linden in the Finals. From 1997 to 2000, he and Keenan forced Linden out and ruined the team from internally.

Perhaps the most encapsulating moment of the relationship between Canucks fans, Trevor Linden, and Mark Messier is from the dying seconds of Game 6 of the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals. It was Messier who was responsible for taking a cheap shot at Linden while he was already down injured, injuring him even further, away from the play in the final seconds of the game in Vancouver. You can see it all in the video below at the bottom of the screen. Linden was left broken physically, but pieced himself together for the mightiest performance of his career. The moment spawned one of the most memorable quotations in franchise history: "he will play, you know he'll play."

Despite a broken nose, broken ribs and torn rib cartilage, and now this injury, Linden rallied back with two goals in Game 7 to bring the Canucks within one goal of tying the game. Contrasted with Messier, Linden was the heart and soul of the Vancouver Canucks. The team had faced Messier in 1994 when the latter took liberties with his dirty play. By 1998, the team's leader had been displaced by a heartless, disinterested egomaniac, the same man who had robbed them of a championship and who now would impose his destructive influence on the team.

Canucks fans have every reason to despise Mark Messier. The Mark Messier years in Vancouver were an absolute disaster, and fans have every reason to despise him, Mike Keenan, and John McCaw. Messier was overpaid, created distraction after distraction, controlled the dressing room and his own fate with a sense of entitlement, disrespected long-time players, traditions, and members of the community, and played as lazily as one could imagine as the team's supposed leader, leading them only towards the bottom of the NHL standings. He destroyed the Canucks' hopes in 1994 and injured the captain, then played a role in Linden's removal and mutilated the team from within. If there was any one individual who could be identified as this franchise's greatest evil in the 1990s, it would be him.

*UPDATE* April 4th, 2013:

Here's more evidence:

Gino Odjick, one of the NHL's great enforcers and a long-time member of the Vancouver Canucks, was asked about this in interview Dan Russell of CKNW 980 this past Thursday (April 4th, 2013). Odjick had been very outspoken at the time of Messier's arrival about how vile the latter's presence was to the team. His view has not changed. The full interview is a half-hour long, part of Russell's series about the hockey journey of NHL players from youth to retirement. I've posted the segment in which Gino discusses his time with the Canucks, his fights, and his friendships.

Inevitably, the issue of Mark Messier and Mike Keenan was brought up, and Gino was clear to state he believes Messier and Keenan destroyed the dressing room. Nobody on the team was comfortable with how Keenan and Messier imposed their authority on the organization:

13:00:

*UPDATE* April 9th, 2013:

More on Mike Keenan, this time from Markus Naslund circa 2003. A Swedish article was posted with comments from Markus; many discussed it in this thread:

^4th Round Draft Pick, to be precise. We would have looked as foolish as Pittsburgh. The deal was all but done when Todd Bertuzzi took an Adrian Aucoin slapshot to the leg and was done for the season. Naslund was kept around due to a shortage of NHL ready wingers on the Canucks team.

He is the coach that scares his players, that sends talents to the farm team just to ***** with them. And that hates swedes.
"Mike Keenan likes to scare guys and humiliate them just to elevate himself" Markus Näslund has to say about the most feared coach in the NHL.

Näslund is not known as a loud mouth who says negative things about others but there is one person he can't stand. Mike Keenan. Iron Mike. "He used to go after us younger and less established players and after a while I was sick of it" Markus says.

Mike Keenan had his breakthrough when he in less than a year turned Rangers from a loserteam to SC-champions 1994. From then he has wandered from team to team and scaring players but not won any more titles.

Keenan - now in Florida - is infamous for his rock hard work methods, that often turns into pure personal attacks on the players. Brutal coaching. Or Management by fear. "If you grew up in Sweden with the security we have here it is totally different having Keenan as coach" Näslund says.

The list of swedish players that has had problems with Keenan is long.

Keenan and Näslund immediately was on a collision course when Iron-Mike arrived in Vancouver. The 98-99 season the swedish goalgetter started in the press box. Sent there by Keenan. He just wanted tough players. "It was a very hard period. Luckily for me players got injured and I got the chance. That turned things around for me and I am glad I was able to get through it" Näslund says with a sigh.

Despite the fact that it was under Keenan Näslund got his breakthrough he is still bitter. "His ways really got to me. A person that has to degrade others is a small person" Näslund says.

It's fortunate McCaw fired Keenan partway through the 1998-99 season, in time before Markus was traded away. At that time, Naslund's confidence was not very high, and had Keenan remained it could have had adverse effects on Markus and the entire franchise. Without Naslund, the Canucks might not have climbed back out from their bottom-dwelling status of the Messier era. Attendance continually declined from 1997-98 to 1999-2000, dropping from an average of 17,320 in 1996-97 to 14,641 in 1999-2000. Markus had a 41-goal season the year after Messier left and was named the team's new captain. Attendance jumped back up to an average of 17,712 again.

We have confirmation that the descriptions of Messier's conduct in this thread are factual. We have a key voice confirming that all of these things took place.

Pat Quinn confirms Mark Messier was involved with the team's management in 1997-98. Quinn was the Canucks' general manager in 1997, and he, of all people, would have witnessed Messier's conduct first-hand. He was at the very center of the situation.

Quinn had been pushed by ownership, or, more precisely, the owner's minions, to fire coach Tom Renney. Not a few general managers would have given the coach a pink slip simply out of self-preservation -- the "better him than me" plan. Quinn didn't, because he understood that a coaching switch would provide only cosmetic changes, nothing substantial.

"I wouldn't fire the coach," Quinn said. "To have done that would have gone against my better judgment. A lot of things we did in Vancouver I'd second-guess. No problem with that. But increasingly, a lot of decisions were being made that were based on things other than that [my better judgment]."

...

No firing: This would be one time when Quinn tried to impose his better judgment on the direction of the team. The last time, as it turned out.

In a few hours, before the Canucks' next game, in Washington, Quinn would be made aware that his time with the club, not Renney's, was at an end. There was immense disappointment, Quinn would later admit, but also a sense of relief.

...

If there was any doubt about that point, it was clarified when Orca Bay only notionally replaced him for the remainder of the season with Steve Tambellini and Steve Bellringer. Tambellini was a former public-relations flack and Bellringer had but two months of experience as a John McCaw underling.

This wasn't the end of hockey's descent into hell occupied by corporate devils' apprentices. It was just the point where Quinn was pushed off.

...

"There were mixed messages . . . an unmanageable situation really," Quinn said. "In the summer of 1996, ownership was pushing me to cut the payroll. Then the push came to sign Wayne Gretzky. When we weren't able to sign Wayne that summer, [Orca Bay] thought that we needed a name. That meant the next summer the push was to sign Mark Messier."

Messier was supposed to fill a leadership void -- at least that's the way it was imagined by marketing types who had only ever ventured into the Canucks' room for autographs. Messier, in fact, created a leadership void, a space previously occupied by the general manager.

It was a long way from a ticket to Tulsa. Messier's word, not Quinn's, was final. How could Renney coach or Quinn manage a team whose captain had the owner's ear? They couldn't. Soon enough, they weren't.

Originally Posted by "Pavel Bure: The Riddle of the Russian Rocket," Kerry Banks, 1999, p231-232.

The Canucks only won one of their next 12 games and players continued to anonymously leak details about angry confrontations between Keenan and his players. On January 30, in a long article in the Vancouver Sun, Gary Mason revealed more details of discord, describing an incident in which Donald Brashear challenged his coach to duke it out on the bench, and a heated verbal exchange between Odjick and Keenan that was sparked when Keenan sarcastically described Odjick as "one of Pat Quinn's boys."

The revelations didn't sit well with Messier, who kept tabs on what the press was saying by having clippings delivered to him daily. Messier sounded off in an interview with Mason, calling the leaks "completely gutless." He disputed that Keenan's tongue-lashing of Linden in St. Louis was extreme. "Sure, it's tough, but you have to be able to accept criticism and accept the truth." He also denied, as some believed, that he was a GM disguised as a captain. "My allegiance has always been toward the players. I have nothing to do with player personnel on this team or who's going where."

Messier's comments rang hollow. Rather than defend his teammates, he had been silent when Keenan began his verbal assaults, and contrary to his claim of noninvolvement in personnel decisions, Messier actually had considerable input on player moves. As early as training camp, he had talked to Renney about players he felt were of no value to the team. As Quinn told Toronto's Globe and Mail in 1998, "Messier was consulted by ownership on personnel decisions. When that happens it's deadly."

In fact, the entire episode was filled with duplicity, as Keenan himself, rather than his players, had actually been the source of some of the leaks. It appeared Keenan was actually attempting to foster a sense of paranoia and mistrust in order to increase his control. The tactic worked. Alarmed by the dissension, Orca Bay gave Keenan a promotion in late January that gave him the power to make trades. He had become the de facto GM.

He was an absolute cancer for Vancouver, with an ego the size of the moon.

Everyone likes to talk about his game 6 "guarantee" against New Jersey, but everyone seems to forget that in the 1999-2000 season, with 7 games remaining, Messier publicly guaranteed that the Canucks would make the playoffs. They missed by 4 points.

Pretty much covers it & then some... tbh, hadnt been a Messier fan at any point in his career, from Indianapolis through Edmonton, New York, certainly not here in Vancouver. Foolish move by Quinn, exacerbating matters with Keenan...

The story begins in the 1997 off-season when the Canucks were in search of a top-line center. Pat Quinn, the Canucks' general manager at the time, had apparently targeted Wayne Gretzky as his free agent of choice.

Absolutely. The date in that sentence has been changed. Minor typo. Had Gretzky signed with Vancouver, the Messier fiasco would have been avoided entirely. He was leaning towards signing with the team, and had been thrilled about the idea of returning to Canada and playing with Pavel Bure, as he later expressed. Unfortunately, Quinn completely mishandled the situation and drove Gretzky away. Desperate to sign a high-profile centerman, he opted for Messier instead the following season.

In 1996, Wayne Gretzky was the greatest name in hockey. Yet he was a free agent who had to go to the United States [with the Los Angeles Kings] to exhibit his talent...

Gretzky was leaning towards a return to Canada and let it be known that he would have no objection to playing for Vancouver [Canucks], but the GM of the day, Pat Quinn, said he had no interest and departed for a vacation in the Far East.

He should have checked with the team owner, John McCaw -- an American. When McCaw found out that Gretzky was willing to play for his Canucks, he was thrilled and called Quinn back from his vacation.

The logisitics of the negotiations were unusual... Gretzky's agent and lawyer were trying to hammer out a contract with Quinn, Canucks assistant GM George McPhee and team accountants. Meanwhile, in an adjacent room, Gretzky and McCaw chatted, relaxed, shared reminiscences and generally set the foundation for a firm friendship.

Late in the evening, with negotiations still dragging on, those two decided that they'd hung around long enough. McCaw went his way and Gretzky went back to his hotel room.

In the wee hours, the phone rang. A deal had been reached. Gretzky had to return to the offices and sign it immediately.

Gretzky refused. He would give his word that he would sign the deal in the morning, but he had no intention of trooping back to the office at 2 a.m...

That wasn't good enough. "It's now or never," was the response.

"That's up to you," said Gretzky.

No doubt the Canucks management felt that Gretzky was trying to use their offer as leverage. That simply was not true. Either way, Gretzky was lost to the Canucks. When McCaw found out, he was furious... Because the Canucks wanted a big name, they went after Mark Messier. They got him, but the contract cost $20 million, considerably more than the proposed Gretzky deal, and Messier's tenure was something less than a resounding success.

In November 1997, McCaw fired Quinn.

It was ultimately Quinn's blunder during the Gretzky negotiations that resulted in the Canucks' search for an alternative centerman. The team looked at the next available option: Mark Messier.

Were there any other Canadian teams that came close to signing Gretzky in the 1996 off-season? I was only 10 in the 1996 off-season, don't really remember what the rumours were or even if I was paying attention. I do remember rumours of the Leafs trying to get him from the Kings, before he got traded to the Blues.

Also didn't know about Quinn's ultimatum to Gretzky. Did this cause any long-term conflict between the two? It's interesting considering they worked together for the 2002 Olympics.

I've spoken to many Canucks fans about Mark Messier and they all agree he was awful in Vancouver and his signing was a huge mistake for the franchise. But the reason he is not just considered a lazy, overpaid, dissapointment and instead is hated with such passion is because he is a symbol for eveyrthing that went wrong during a dark time in Canucks history. On the ice Messier's didn't live up to to expectations the team and fans had for him but some of the truths have been stretched and some details that might spread some of the blame around to other parties are often omitted to vilify him.

Some of those things are:

1 The organizations problems started with the signing of Messier, Messier was responsible for the getting rid of talent. the team started to imrove as soon as Messier left.

The Vancouver Canucks had went to the Cup final in 94 and they had declined each season since and missed the playoffs prior to Messier's arrival.

1994 - 85pts, 2nd in the Pacific, Lost Stanley Cup Finals
1995 - 48pts, 2nd in the Pacific, Lost Conference Semifinals
1996 - 79pts, 3rd in the Pacific, Lost Conference Quarterfinals
1997 - 77pts, 4th in the Pacific, Did not qualify

In Summer of 1997 the Canucks signed Messier (age 36) to a 3 year $6 million/season deal.

During Messier's first 2 seasons, the Canucks continued their decline. Pavel Bure (the teams leading scorer) held out and demanded a trade blaming a history of being mistreated by management. They also moved out many popular players due to poor play.

1998 - 64pts, 7th in the Pacific, Did not qualify
1999 - 58pts, 4th in the Northwest, Did not qualify

In Messier's 3rd Season the Canucks lead by a younger retooled team had their best season since 1994, falling 4 points short of a playoff spot.

2000 - 83pts, 3rd in the Northwest, Did not qualify

Messier signed with Rangers as an UFA and the Canucks continued their rise back to the playoffs.

2 Messier wasn't the same player in Vancouver because of lack of interest. While it's true Messier did score 14 less goals and 22 less points than he did the previous year in NY, ths decline started the year before with the Rangers when his goals total dropped by 11 and points total dropped by 15. Messier was getting old and his play was declining rapidly. Despie Messier's huge drops in production, during his 3 years in Vancouver (ages 37-39), he finished 2nd, 2nd, and 3rd in team scoring.

3 Trevor Linden and the captaincy. At the press conference when Messier was signed by Vancouver, Messier was asked about the captaincy, he said, "Everybody knows Trevor Linden is the captain of Vancouver and that he's done a tremendous job being captain. Their is no reason to change that."

Messier had said Linden was captain, yet Linden still asked teammates and Messier himself what he should do with the captaincy and they all told him to do what he thought was right, Linden stands up in front of the whole dressing room and says to his teammates that he wanted to turn the captaincy over to Messier. Messier accepted.

Trevor Linden told Gary Mason of the Vancouver Sun tht, "It was just something I had to do. If I remained the captain, bringing in a player with his history and leadership qualities, if things did go wrong I was going to be second-guessed the whole time. So my only option was to say to, 'Mark, listen, I think this is the way it should be,' and Mark accepted it, so we moved on."

Linden was playing poorly and was dealt for Todd Bertuzzi and Bryan McCabe (who was packaged with a 1st round pick for Chicago's 1st round pick so the Canucks could draft both Sedin's).

4 Wayne Maki and #11. Mark Messier was told that using the number had been cleared with the Maki family. They had no idea Messier was going to be wearing the number and found out watching the news. They were hurt and when finally contacted by the Canucks were told they should be honored that Messier is wearing the number, they understandably weren't. Later they offered their blessing to have Messier wear the number during the length of his contract as long as the Canucks would acknowledge the number as retired. The Canucks refused saying the number never was retired.

Were there any other Canadian teams that came close to signing Gretzky in the 1996 off-season? I was only 10 in the 1996 off-season, don't really remember what the rumours were or even if I was paying attention. I do remember rumours of the Leafs trying to get him from the Kings, before he got traded to the Blues.

Also didn't know about Quinn's ultimatum to Gretzky. Did this cause any long-term conflict between the two? It's interesting considering they worked together for the 2002 Olympics.

Imagine Gretzky centering Bure. Wow.

It seems Vancouver and Toronto were the only two Canadian teams seeking Gretzky's services during the 1996 off-season. Here are two sources, one from a 2011 Damien Cox article, and the other from a 2008 Howard Berger article.

In the summer of 1996 — long after he had re-written the NHL record book — Gretzky wanted to finish his playing career as a member of the Leafs. Fletcher, in his first coming as Toronto GM, had all but worked out the details of a free agent contract with Barnett when Leafs’ owner Steve Stavro put the kibosh on the deal. In the ensuing years, two stories have made the rounds. The first, and most prominent, is that Stavro denied approval on the grounds that Gretzky could not possibly fill any vacant seats at the Gardens. Stavro was in a financial crunch at the time and had recently slashed the Leafs’ payroll. But, Stavro, himself, had a different take — one he relayed to me on a long flight from Vienna to Toronto after the 2005 World Hockey Championships. The owner, who would pass away just more than a year later, claimed that Gretzky and Barnett wanted equity in the Leafs — a demand that he and his board of directors were unprepared to meet.

Whatever the case, the situation didn’t pan out, and Gretzky signed with the New York Rangers — the club with which he finished his career three years later.

In 1996, Gretzky was a 35-year-old free agent, and set up an arrangement with then Leaf GM Cliff Fletcher to leave St. Louis and join the Leafs.

“We were talking about something between $2 million and $3 million a season,” Gretzky told Gord Stellick for the book ’67: The Maple Leafs, Their Sensational Victory and the End of An Empire, published in 2004.

“And you know, the ridiculous part is that Vancouver was offering me $8 million a season. But I wanted to be a Leaf in the worst way. I told Cliff, ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to make it work. You can defer my salary for 25 years if you have to. Whatever it takes to get the deal done.’”

Ultimately, partly because Stavro was forced to pay millions to the charities named in Harold Ballard’s will, the Leafs declined to sign Gretzky, who joined the New York Rangers, instead.

“(Fletcher) said he couldn’t get the deal approved,” said Gretzky, who said he was convinced at the time he was going to play for the Leafs. “Oh, definitely. I thought that way for a few weeks.”

Based on these two articles and Pat Quinn's infamous mishandling of his negotiations with Gretzky, it's difficult to say in which order Gretzky was approached by each team. I'm not sure whether the ordeal between him and the Canucks had an influence on what he says in the Cox article; of course, resentment of any sort would change the story he would report, though none can be sure except him.

Regardless, both teams failed to sign Gretzky when it seemed each deal was very close; in Vancouver's case, it resulted in the Canucks pursuing Messier instead.

In a short time, I may provide footage involving commentators' discussion about Messier from the games I have archived. Ken Daniels and Mickey Redmond of the Detroit Red Wings broadcasts make many observations during one game regarding Messier's play. In an MSG broadcast, John Davidson remarks the same. Messier took short shifts, was not physical, and looked very disinterested.

Here is a fight involving Messier from the 1998-99 season. Aside from the fight itself, the more glaring detail is the comment Jim Robson, the Canucks' legendary play-by-play announcer, makes in the following video clip:

"We haven't seen that from Messier for two seasons."

Messier was once a tough, inspired leader with the Oilers and Rangers, but was now emotionless.

In February 2000, after the infamous Marty McSorley slash on Donald Brashear, each team's coaches and players were interviewed. Everyone from Marc Crawford to Pat Burns to Brad May showed emotion. Messier lacked any emotion in contrast with everyone else.

3:41:

Quote:

Originally Posted by LetsBeReality

Massive Canucks fan. Especially during that time.

Messier was not hated nor considered the worst Canuck of all time.

In most people's eyes around here, he just didn't work out.

Keenan, Burke, Nedved would go down as more disliked.

I disagree. If you were to ask any Canucks fan from that time, they would cite Messier as a major problem. He was disliked already after 1994. To invade that dressing room along with Keenan and dismantle the entire team, and then to play without any sort of emotion or effort, made him the focal point of criticism throughout those years. The topic has arisen every few years, and the consensus has always been the same. He was hated, and he still is very much hated by Canucks fans.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sonny Lamateena

Messier signed with Rangers as an UFA and the Canucks continued their rise back to the playoffs.

He was bought out in the third year of his five-year deal. The team did not want him around any longer. He was an overpaid, lazy player who showed little effort or passion, and who was supposed to represent them as their captain. At no time did he lead the team; he was 12th, 9th, and 18th in penalty minutes, took fewer shots than he had ever taken up to that point, did not hit, and simply drifted around often, taking short shifts. He and Keenan had changed the dressing room environment dramatically in his first season with the team, ousting the team's core pieces, and was now leading the team to mediocrity by coasting through these seasons with little interest.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sonny Lamateena

2 Messier wasn't the same player in Vancouver because of lack of interest. While it's true Messier did score 14 less goals and 22 less points than he did the previous year in NY, ths decline started the year before with the Rangers when his goals total dropped by 11 and points total dropped by 15. Messier was getting old and his play was declining rapidly. Despie Messier's huge drops in production, during his 3 years in Vancouver (ages 37-39), he finished 2nd, 2nd, and 3rd in team scoring.

He hadn't shown any effort. That was a major factor in everyone's disappointment with his play. Had he put in any effort or showed even a portion of the aggression or passion he had played with in his previous years, he would not have bothered Canucks fans to the same degree; his on-ice play made him an even greater burden to the team, and his off-ice disturbance made him an unacceptable distraction. In those three years, he played on the team's top line and often benefited from playing with two more impactful linemates.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sonny Lamateena

3 Trevor Linden and the captaincy. At the press conference when Messier was signed by Vancouver, Messier was asked about the captaincy, he said, "Everybody knows Trevor Linden is the captain of Vancouver and that he's done a tremendous job being captain. Their is no reason to change that."

Messier had said Linden was captain, yet Linden still asked teammates and Messier himself what he should do with the captaincy and they all told him to do what he thought was right, Linden stands up in front of the whole dressing room and says to his teammates that he wanted to turn the captaincy over to Messier. Messier accepted.

Trevor Linden told Gary Mason of the Vancouver Sun tht, "It was just something I had to do. If I remained the captain, bringing in a player with his history and leadership qualities, if things did go wrong I was going to be second-guessed the whole time. So my only option was to say to, 'Mark, listen, I think this is the way it should be,' and Mark accepted it, so we moved on."

Linden was playing poorly and was dealt for Todd Bertuzzi and Bryan McCabe (who was packaged with a 1st round pick for Chicago's 1st round pick so the Canucks could draft both Sedin's).

Keenan had decided to dismantle the team upon becoming the team's general manager. His feuds with Linden are certainly well-documented, and definitely played a role in Linden's removal from the team. He was previously considered the one player who would not be traded due to his importance to the team's culture, to the franchise, to the fans, and to the city. As soon as Keenan and Messier arrived, the dressing room became hostile and wholesale changes were made to remove the entire core of players.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sonny Lamateena

4 Wayne Maki and #11. Mark Messier was told that using the number had been cleared with the Maki family. They had no idea Messier was going to be wearing the number and found out watching the news. They were hurt and when finally contacted by the Canucks were told they should be honored that Messier is wearing the number, they understandably weren't. Later they offered their blessing to have Messier wear the number during the length of his contract as long as the Canucks would acknowledge the number as retired. The Canucks refused saying the number never was retired.

Messier never made any effort or request to wear a different number despite the Maki family's plea. He was made fully aware of the situation. We have already documented his sense of entitlement during his time in Vancouver. He remained idle while everything else happened around him; the organization spoon-fed him anything he wanted. One has to wonder if the Keenan hiring was influenced by him, whether it be Quinn who felt Keenan could ignite a spark in Messier or if Messier wanted Keenan to coach.

Here is a fight involving Messier from the 1998-99 season. Aside from the fight itself, the more glaring detail is the comment Jim Robson, the Canucks' legendary play-by-play announcer, makes in the following video clip:

"We haven't seen that from Messier for two seasons."

It cannot be understated, too, just how much Robson loved the Canucks and their players. To hear him speak like that about a Canuck is really significant.

I remember another time when Messier was here when there was a line brawl, and everyone was going at it, and then the camera pans out and Messier is just skating around in the neutral zone gazing off into the crowd as if nothing was happening. The guy didn't give a ****.

Also, the guy went on the radio in Vancouver in 2008 or so, and had the nerve to say that he thought his time in Vancouver was a great success.

He remains the only Canuck player that I've ever heard my mother, a rabid Canuck fan since they joined the league, wish bodily harm.

He was bought out in the third year of his five-year deal. The team did not want him around any longer. He was an overpaid, lazy player who showed little effort or passion, and who was supposed to represent them as their captain. At no time did he lead the team; he was 12th, 9th, and 18th in penalty minutes, took fewer shots than he had ever taken up to that point, did not hit, and simply drifted around often, taking short shifts. He and Keenan had changed the dressing room environment dramatically in his first season with the team, ousting the team's core pieces, and was now leading the team to mediocrity by coasting through these seasons with little interest

He hadn't shown any effort. That was a major factor in everyone's disappointment with his play. Had he put in any effort or showed even a portion of the aggression or passion he had played with in his previous years, he would not have bothered Canucks fans to the same degree; his on-ice play made him an even greater burden to the team, and his off-ice disturbance made him an unacceptable distraction. In those three years, he played on the team's top line and often benefited from playing with two more impactful linemates.

Keenan had decided to dismantle the team upon becoming the team's general manager. His feuds with Linden are certainly well-documented, and definitely played a role in Linden's removal from the team. He was previously considered the one player who would not be traded due to his importance to the team's culture, to the franchise, to the fans, and to the city. As soon as Keenan and Messier arrived, the dressing room became hostile and wholesale changes were made to remove the entire core of players.

Messier never made any effort or request to wear a different number despite the Maki family's plea. He was made fully aware of the situation. We have already documented his sense of entitlement during his time in Vancouver. He remained idle while everything else happened around him; the organization spoon-fed him anything he wanted. One has to wonder if the Keenan hiring was influenced by him, whether it be Quinn who felt Keenan could ignite a spark in Messier or if Messier wanted Keenan to coach.

So your theory is after 18 seasons in the NHL Messier decided it's time to start mailing it in. He said no more hitting, racking up tonnes of penalty minutes, and super long shifts (because that's what you want from a 36-40 year old Mark Messier). It's not possible that he physically had declined to the point that he couldn't play that way anymore and that the production decline he had the previous year in NY wasn't the beginning of a steep decline for Messier?

Why is Messier so hated? It's because some vocal Canucks fans blame Messier not only for his failures but for decisions of ownership, management, and coach's. Even the poor play of other players are blamed on Messier. No one else is accountable for their actions. Everyone gets a pass, Messier either did it or made someone else do do it.

So your theory is after 18 seasons in the NHL Messier decided it's time to start mailing it in. He said no more hitting, racking up tonnes of penalty minutes, and super long shifts (because that's what you want from a 36-40 year old Mark Messier). It's not possible that he physically had declined to the point that he couldn't play that way anymore and that the production decline he had the previous year in NY wasn't the beginning of a steep decline for Messier?

Why is Messier so hated? It's because some vocal Canucks fans blame Messier not only for his failures but for decisions of ownership, management, and coach's. Even the poor play of other players are blamed on Messier. No one else is accountable for their actions. Everyone gets a pass, Messier either did it or made someone else do do it.

I definitely found the criticism for taking shifts that were too short to be really strange.

Long time Canucks fan... good work, jetsalternate. You hit most of the salient points.

Messier is easily my all time least favourite Canuck (followed by Randy Boyd, but that's another story).

I just want to add that, part of the galling factor about his time here was that he sucked so bad after having been so good. Up to then, Messier had made a career out of beating the Canucks in every way imaginable. A decade plus of *****-slapping us while he was with the Oilers, and then, when we had finally seen him shipped off to the Eastern conference, he came back and yanked our Stanley Cup away.

We'd spent 15 years cursing his name and wishing we had someone like him... and then we did... but we got old, complacent, entitled Messier instead. He even managed to beat us by joining us.

I always thought that with Messier coming in it opened the door to get rid of Linden. We all know how loved Linden is in Vancouver at a Beliveau-type level. He's a saint in Vancouver. The most popular player in franchise history is moved out after Messier comes in. That wouldn't have sat well with me and to be honest I can remember something similar happening in Toronto. When Clark was traded for Sundin it gutted a lot of heart from Toronto. Not that we didn't love Sundin, but it took a while to warm up to him. Gilmour got the captaincy after Clark and then Gilmour moved out and Sundin took it afterwards. Not everyone was a fan of Sundin taking the captaincy after two of the most popular players in team history.

I think the difference is Sundin never had much of an ego and was very likable and we ended up liking him. But it is sort of the same context, no?

I always thought that with Messier coming in it opened the door to get rid of Linden. We all know how loved Linden is in Vancouver at a Beliveau-type level. He's a saint in Vancouver. The most popular player in franchise history is moved out after Messier comes in. That wouldn't have sat well with me and to be honest I can remember something similar happening in Toronto. When Clark was traded for Sundin it gutted a lot of heart from Toronto. Not that we didn't love Sundin, but it took a while to warm up to him. Gilmour got the captaincy after Clark and then Gilmour moved out and Sundin took it afterwards. Not everyone was a fan of Sundin taking the captaincy after two of the most popular players in team history.

I think the difference is Sundin never had much of an ego and was very likable and we ended up liking him. But it is sort of the same context, no?

Sundin was also 23 years old and, while Messier was 36, so it's not exactly the same situation.

I get that trading fan favorites sucks, but from a purely cold hockey perspective, trading Linden for Bertuzzi and McCabe has to be considered a win for the Canucks, right?

I always thought that with Messier coming in it opened the door to get rid of Linden. We all know how loved Linden is in Vancouver at a Beliveau-type level. He's a saint in Vancouver. The most popular player in franchise history is moved out after Messier comes in. That wouldn't have sat well with me and to be honest I can remember something similar happening in Toronto. When Clark was traded for Sundin it gutted a lot of heart from Toronto. Not that we didn't love Sundin, but it took a while to warm up to him. Gilmour got the captaincy after Clark and then Gilmour moved out and Sundin took it afterwards. Not everyone was a fan of Sundin taking the captaincy after two of the most popular players in team history.

I think the difference is Sundin never had much of an ego and was very likable and we ended up liking him. But it is sort of the same context, no?

this was the biggest problem with the Mess here in Vancouver, his ego just wrecked an already poor situation.

Nevermind his play on the ice, he showed a total alck of leadership and commitment to the team, it was more like "Hey I'm a legend whorship me " attitude that Canuck fans didn't like and for good reaons.

The way Moose conducted himself in Vancouver wouldn't fly in any NHL city period.

I always thought that with Messier coming in it opened the door to get rid of Linden. We all know how loved Linden is in Vancouver at a Beliveau-type level. He's a saint in Vancouver. The most popular player in franchise history is moved out after Messier comes in. That wouldn't have sat well with me and to be honest I can remember something similar happening in Toronto. When Clark was traded for Sundin it gutted a lot of heart from Toronto. Not that we didn't love Sundin, but it took a while to warm up to him. Gilmour got the captaincy after Clark and then Gilmour moved out and Sundin took it afterwards. Not everyone was a fan of Sundin taking the captaincy after two of the most popular players in team history.

I think the difference is Sundin never had much of an ego and was very likable and we ended up liking him. But it is sort of the same context, no?

well, sundin didn't captain the evil big market jerks that beat your franchise's best and most beloved team ever.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LetsBeReality

Massive Canucks fan. Especially during that time.

Messier was not hated nor considered the worst Canuck of all time.

In most people's eyes around here, he just didn't work out.

Keenan, Burke, Nedved would go down as more disliked.

lies. completely and total lies. messier was at the time, continues to be, and will always be the most hated canuck of all time. in the eyes of the vast majority of canucks fans who remember those years, messier was satan x hitler x brad marchand. i was there, i heard many many unrepeatable things said about him in the stands.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheDevilMadeMe

Sundin was also 23 years old and, while Messier was 36, so it's not exactly the same situation.

I get that trading fan favorites sucks, but from a purely cold hockey perspective, trading Linden for Bertuzzi and McCabe has to be considered a win for the Canucks, right?

luongo and one of the sedins, plus we eventually got to cheer for trevor again in his last years anyway? yep, definite win.

and re: the quinn/gretzky debacle, which led to the messier debacle, here's a what-if: i never heard a rumour about this so i'm this was probably never in the plans. but one of the other big ticket free agents center the year we picked up messier was joe sakic. yes, local boy joe sakic. joe was on the market because pierre lacroix was jerking him around one year after giving forsberg huge dollars. the rangers gave sakic that $21 million offer sheet only after they lost messier to the canucks. messier's contract was $20 million over the same three years. nice one, pat quinn.

interestingly, given my last post, the five draft picks we would have lost: one of the sedins, nathan smith, r.j. umberger, the first round pick sent to washington for trevor linden (boyd gordon), ryan kesler.

It should be noted that Messier never made (let alone led his team to) the playoffs again even after leaving Vancouver. In his four years in New York, he couldn't bring a team consisting of guys like Leetch, Fleury, Bure, Jagr, Kovalev, Lindros, Nedved, Holik, Graves, Dvorak, Richter, Dunham, Poti, York, Rucinsky, Berard, Barnaby, Malakhov, Malhotra et al to the playoffs once.

The season immediately after Messier's departure, Vancouver makes the playoffs despite being led on a 75-point Naslund, a 56-point Andrew Cassels and whose #1 goalie for 35 games was Bob Essensa (Potvin played the other 35, with Cloutier coming in later). And yes, the NHL season after Messier's departure, New York makes the playoffs too, for several consecutive seasons.

It should be noted that Messier never made (let alone led his team to) the playoffs again even after leaving Vancouver. In his four years in New York, he couldn't bring a team consisting of guys like Leetch, Fleury, Bure, Jagr, Kovalev, Lindros, Nedved, Holik, Graves, Dvorak, Richter, Dunham, Poti, York, Rucinsky, Berard, Barnaby, Malakhov, Malhotra et al to the playoffs once.

The season immediately after Messier's departure, Vancouver makes the playoffs despite being led on a 75-point Naslund, a 56-point Andrew Cassels and whose #1 goalie for 35 games was Bob Essensa (Potvin played the other 35, with Cloutier coming in later). And yes, the NHL season after Messier's departure, New York makes the playoffs too, for several consecutive seasons.

It should also be noted that Vancouver was coming off 3 straight years of declining results including missing the playoffs the season before Messier signed. Messier's last season in Vancouver (2000) the team had 83 points missing the playoffs by 4 points, it was the franchises best season since 1994.

In New York after going the conference finals with Messier in 1997 the team missed the playoffs every year Messier was in Vancouver.

Mark Messier had nothing to do with rise or fall of either team. Vancouver was on the way down before he got there and was on it's way back up with Messier on the team. New York became a perennial non playoff team before Messier returned. Both teams had major problems and had to be totally rebuilt, 36-44 year old Mark Messier wasn't either teams problem but he wasn't a solution either.

Messier and the Canucks were just not a good fit. Guess Messier was set in his ways being a league veteran at that time and wasn't willing to change for the sake of the team.

were not a good fit and I think he walked into a dressing room where Linden had the respect of the players, coaches and FANS. It became obvious from the word go that Messier walked all over Linden because he had the rings. Fans saw that, liked and respected Linden took poorly to messier and it went down hill